Officials with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences are renovating its Museum of Forestry facility in Whiteville. But the forestry museum's board will have to raise $100,000 as part of the process.
Legislators wrote into the state budget a requirement for the fundraising effort as a means of proving the facility has value to the Whiteville community.
Museum of Natural Sciences director Emlyn Koster says plans are to turn the building into a hands-on community learning facility.
"We're going to be taking proven techniques of bringing children into interactive touch with the world around them -- both indoor and outdoor -- in a joint approach to bring learning with a particular reference to the forestry ecosystem into what we do out there," Koster says.
Koster says play spaces, labs, and classroom learning will all be involved in the facility. He expects the funds to be raised and the changes implemented by the end of next June.
